When Kevin Slimp stepped outside the door of the community room at F & M Community Bank in Preston Friday after a seven-hour session with staff members of Bluff Country Newspaper Group, he said, “It really doesn’t feel that cold here.” This statement is from a resident of Knoxville, Tennessee, who first ventured out that morning in a temperature of 16 below zero.

When Kevin Slimp stepped outside the door of the community room at F & M Community Bank in Preston Friday after a seven-hour session with staff members of Bluff Country Newspaper Group, he said, “It really doesn’t feel that cold here.” This statement is from a resident of Knoxville, Tennessee, who first ventured out that morning in a temperature of 16 below zero.

Vina Lund, an Ostrander resident who just celebrated her 105th birthday, was asked by a reporter during her birthday party to confirm a story her son told about her dancing with the notorious outlaw, Babyface Nelson, at the Sheep Shed in Wykoff.

The butterfly effect — the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil setting off a tornado in Texas — is a term used in chaos theory to describe how tiny variations can have a significant impact on giant, complex systems, such as weather patterns.

I spent another day at school last week as a volunteer to help in the classroom of my third grade granddaughter. It’s through a program called WatchDOGS — the DOGS stands for Dads, or in my case grandDads, Of Great Students.

When I told my grandson I was going to be gone for a couple days last week to attend the Minnesota Newspaper Association annual convention in the Twin Cities, he asked what I was going to do. I told him mostly go to workshops and sessions to learn.

Proponents and opponents have already lined up on the proposals by DFL state senators in Minnesota and President Barack Obama to make tuition free for community college education as long as students meet certain criteria, such as reaching a certain grade point average and staying in school for two years.

A woman next to me at a community meeting commented to the group of local residents assembled there that “no one reads newspapers anymore.” I think she was being funny, while trying to needle me a bit since we knew each other, but it could very well be she also believed it since there are a lot of experts asserting the death of newspapers.

Likely few people who have made purchases in Fillmore County since Jan. 1 noticed they paid a new tax that was added to their total bill. The reason this new tax escaped notice is because a $10 purchase added just a nickel in state sales tax to their bill.

I typically write a letter to go in my personal Christmas cards each year to update people living elsewhere about our family. This year, I had a hard time with that task since our family really didn’t do anything too exciting the past year and it seemed the year was full of mostly bad news, which is better left to myself as it wouldn’t be a good fit for a cheerful Christmas letter.

The increasing gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” has been a national, even global, concern over the past several years. Minnesota school administrators, particularly those in Greater Minnesota, have started to raise concern about a similar gap in one particular area — deferred maintenance funding for schools.

Confusion has reigned in Spring Valley since the local solid waste service recently changed its schedule. Some residents have had their garbage totes out the wrong days and their recycling totes out the wrong weeks for the every-other-week recycling service.

Divining the mysteries of the economy seems to be about as reliable as reading tea leaves. Even among experts, there are different answers on how the economy in the United States is doing. Ask the average person, and the answer varies even more, depending on location and other circumstances.

The darkest season seems particularly cruel this year. Bitter cold and snow came shortly after Halloween. A string of deaths, including leaders in communities from Rushford to Spring Valley, continues. The announcement of the closing of Alco stores in Caledonia, Cresco and Spring Valley bolsters a trend of downsizing the business presence in our small towns.

Buildings in downtown Rochester are reportedly being sold for millions of dollars, some more than twice their estimated value, likely a result of the $6 billion Destination Medical Center project that is just getting underway. DMC isn’t just about real estate speculation, though, as new hotels, senior housing units and office buildings are already going up in Rochester in anticipation of the growth the project will bring.